Now that the pedalboard design had been “frozen” and proven its worth, I felt it was time to finalize the design, make the custom patch cords, and leave myself some debugging time in case there were any problems. The Furman pedalboard uses the Velcro approach for mounting pedals, which has the advantage of malleability if you change your mind about how best to set things or change your setup, but isn’t as secure as screwing stuff down with actual screws. I was concerned whether this would work with the computer, but was relieved to find that it actually stays in place very well. Nonetheless it never hurts to be safe, so I fashioned a hard foam “ring” to cushion the computer when the case is closed.
Although there wasn’t enough room to mount both the breakout box and interface flat on the Velcro surface, the pedalboard has enough height that the two boxes could fit on top of each other. I used double-sided Velcro to mount the 1616m on top of the MAGIC breakout box.
Furman claims you can stick up to eight pedal effects on the base, and that seems about right for standard size pedals as the base is 13.75" x 26.75". However, the devices I planned to put in the pedalboard are big and relatively heavy, and use fairly sizeable AC adapters. As a result, it took quite a bit of thought to figure out how to best configure the various boxes. Here’s the picture of the final result.
The computer is in the lower left-hand corner; the small rectangle to the left of the computer is the E-Mu 1616m PCMCIA card. Toward the right, the 1616m audio interface sits above the MAGIC breakout box. All the other small boxes are AC adapters.
And here’s a picture of what it looks like when it’s closed up.
Given the traveling I do, I’m a huge fan of Things With Rollers and Handles. I should also mention that the case that comes with the Digital Les Paul has rollers and handles, and has sufficient pockets and protection that it’s not just an afterthought but a very tasty accessory. It’s pretty cool to be able to walk around pulling the guitar with one hand and the pedalboard with the other.
Of course, there was also the question of cabling, which in this case is more complicated than a traditional pedalboard, not only because of the computer-related cables (AC adapter, CAT-5 cable going to the card, and a USB dongle hanging off the end) but because the MAGIC breakout box sends six lines to the E-Mu 1616m interface – two to the front panel, and four to the rear panel. It was clear I needed to make my own cables, and this is the Planet Waves Cable Station came to the rescue. This system lets you buy right-angle and standard 1/4" plugs, as well as cable and a cable cutter, and put custom cables together literally in minutes. You simply cut the cable to length, insert an end into a jack, tighten a setscrew, then repeat for the other end of the cable…done. I ended up using a mix of right angle and straight plugs cut to just the right length, and this definitely neatened things up.
That still left dealing with the AC cords going to the various AC adapters and the AC adapter outputs going to the various boxes, but a few cable ties took care of keeping the wires from getting out of hand.
Overall, I was pretty happy with the results, but it’s time some company came up with a pedalboard system optimized for computers, not just floor pedals. I’m playing a 21st century guitar, and it would be great to have a 21st century pedalboard to match.